Ideal Foreign Books Inc

Unhelpful attitude towards customers. I spoke to Alain about an Italian textbook for a language class. The book should be ordered from Italy, and the instructor of our class mentioned this bookstore to the whole class for this purpose. When I wanted to process the order, Alain asked for my credit card number. I told him that I don’t want to share it on the phone, and I proposed to make a money transfer, since I didn’t want to go to Queens just to make a single payment. He refused to receive money transfer for the most ridiculous reason ever: that he doesn’t know the bank account number and he can’t give me this information before Monday, because his employee who knows it won’t be back before then. I couldn’t possibly understand how a merchant doesn’t know the bank account information, or why it was impossible to reach this employee via phone. Rather than trying to help me to solve the problem, he kept on insisting that I should trust him and give him my credit card number. After I hung up, I found the book on
, and made my order. It was $ 20 cheaper, more reliable, and easier. Don’t waste your time here if you don’t have to.

Absolutely HORRIBLE customer service and accountability with this book store. Avoid them!
After searching high and low for a Spanish dictionary recommended by my colleagues, this small, independent book store was eager to tell me that they could get it. It was a special order because of it’s price — almost $ 300.00 — but the owner/​manager — Alain — said that it would not be a problem to get it as he boasted about how he orders tons of book from this publisher. Great.
I give him the ISBN during our phone conversation and then he wants to take my credit card information. I gave him what was needed to order the book but gave him explicit instructions to NOT charge my credit card until he was ready to ship it to me, pretty standard practice from most ethical business — they won’t charge your card until they have the item in stock and are ready to ship it. I get an email alert just days later from my credit card company that my account has been charged. I call them and Alain was not in that day so I spoke to whoever answered the phone and told them the problem and that I wanted the charged reversed and they could charge my CC when the item was in and ready to ship. They knew nothing about this and told me that Alain would have to handle this and that he would contact me when he came in. I never heard back from Alain. So, I left it go — as I wanted the dictionary. Finally, several weeks later, the dictionary arrives. I was out of town for several weeks when it arrived. When I get home from my trip, I open it up and it looks legit (I never saw a picture of what it should look like before hand). It sits in my home office for another week or so before I have the time to take a closer look at it. I was happy to finally get this high-​end dictionary, so I call my colleague who recommended it. As I describe it to him, he tells me that this is NOT the right dictionary. Aarrghhhh! I check the ISBN I gave when I ordered and it was NOT the same that is on the inside of the dictionary. I was livid!
Long story short, after several back and forth calls and emails to Alain, that I wanted this replaced with what I had originally requested — with him paying for the return shipping since this was NOT my mistake — he refuses, citing it took me ‘too long ’ to get back to him about the error and then tries to accuse me of giving the wrong ISBN and changing it later — which I never fully understood. (How can you change an ISBN that is imprinted on the inside of a book?) Ridiculous! To «entertain» his outlandish theory, I asked him why I would go through such hassle to order a book, wait weeks for it to arrive, pay $ 300.00 for it, only to claim it is the wrong one while he continued to claim that it was — despite the mismatched ISBN’s. He was never able to offer an intelligent response to my assertions.
In the end, I ordered the dictionary from a more reputable and customer-​oriented bookstore.
My recommendation: Do NOT order books from Ideal Foreign Books! If they make a mistake in ordering, they will never take responsibility for their error nor make it right with the customer. Definitely go with larger, better-​known book sellers that have practices that treat the paying-​customer properly and with respect — thankful for you giving them your business.